Hearing the Shofar’s Cry in the Jerusalem of Lithuania

Written by Rabbi Avram Mlotek’s (’15)

I spend a lot of time in cemeteries. It’s part of the gig: I’m a rabbi. And my Hebrew name — Avraham Yitzhak — is common enough that I often see myself on gravestones, an eerie reminder of the liturgy we’ll recite this Rosh Hashana: “A man’s origin and end is from dust.”

But last month, I came face to face with my actual name: Avram Mlotek. There it was, on a stone right next to that bearing the name of my grandfather, Joseph Mlotek.

Rabbi Avram Mlotek’s (’15) grandfather was one of the 6,000 Jews to whom transit visas were issued by Chiune Sugihara, vice-consul for the Japanese empire in Lithuania, during World War II. Read the full article here.